Rumour: New DS Devkits In The Hands Of The Pokémon Company, Select Third-Parties

Earlier this week, an alleged third-party inside source shared with games site CVG that development kits for the DS2 are in the hands of certain developers.

"It’s genuinely the best thing I think I’ve ever worked with," the anonymous source told CVG. "I can tell you that it’s got a ’tilt’ function that’s not dissimilar to iPhone, but does a lot more. We know that The Pokemon Company are getting special attention with it."

Since the actual firm named "The Pokémon Company" is a merely marketing and licensing front for the franchise, CVG may be referring to Game Freak, the company that develops the mainline Pokémon RPGs. CVG’s inside man also mentioned that the SDKs were currently being shared with developers on a trial basis as the end hardware product has yet to be finalized. Adding credence to CVG’s inside man is the fact that Game Freak recently announced a brand new Pokémon game and Satoru Iwata confirmed that tilt functionality was, in fact, being considered for the next DS. Apparently a stylus with tactile feedback might be in the cards, too.

With some comparing Nintendo’s release philosophy to that of Apple’s in recent years, the idea of the company simultaneously maintaining low and high-end SKUs for their portable products doesn’t seem so far-fetched. Following that train of thought, one would expect the DS Lite to be discontinued sometime this year to establish the Nintendo DSi as the new low-end model.

This is very par the course for Nintendo’s line of handhelds. The DS in its current hardware form has been around for almost 7 years now and has seen 3 upgrades (not counting the DSi LL, which is pretty much the same product), which follows the same trend the GBA line went through. The only difference here is that the third iteration of the DS is as wildly popular as the first and second, which wasn’t the case for the GBM, which sold very low numbers as the DS was becoming the new popular machine.

While the DS is a great platform, its time for an upgrade. As Apples marketing is attempting to push farther and farther into the realm of gaming, these new platforms are beginning to highlight the DS’s age. A new top of the line platform with multimedia functions, a core gaming device that also does multimedia (the opposite of Apples multimedia device that can also do gaming) will be huge, and I can honestly say I’m pretty excited for it.

/rant

kylehyde

Well said ElTopo.

Even that I love the DS, I think that is time for a new handheld, and considering the rumors about the possible chip (nvidia tegra or maybe the tegra2), the tilt function and the tactile feedback, sounds that this could be a really worthy succesor. In fact, I can’t wait to the E3.

MisterNiwa

The new Pokemon Game is a Launch Title for the DS2 that gets announced on E3 this year!

Oh, it’ll be backward compatible for sure. I can’t see them blocking off six years worth of games.

malek86

At least until the last iteration. Think the GBA Micro and DSi.

ElTopo

Right after a platform has been on the market for 6+ years and the last generation has been discontinued for a good four years, you usually stop supporting a dead platform.

Saturnus

T_T what about the DSi you bastards!?

Aoshi00

Guess we should be content in taking pictures and add a Mario mustache lol.. Honestly, the thing that I appreciate about the DSi the most is the “reset button” back to the main menu, no need to turn the system off btwn changing cartridges. Good thing I didn’t buy the PSPGo….

ElTopo

Your going to get almost two years of use out of it, and no ones forcing you to be an early adopter of the DS2. You bought an upgrade to an old system and have almost 7 years worth of DS titles on the market, I don’t understand what all the fuss is about.

thebanditking

Perhaps I could elaborate on the “fuss” for you then. While I my self feel that DS is showing its age, the DSi was marketed to be its replacement, especially with DSi only games rumored to become the norm, many even loathing having to upgrade to a DSi because of that. Then you have the DSi XL announcement further placing emphasis on the DSi line, and DSi ware. The rest of the world does not even have the DSi XL in stores yet so if the DS2 announcement is really so close (an E3 or TGS reveal) then why even bother to waste the R&D on the DSi (its only been on the market since last spring.)

Not to mention many bought a DSi figuring it would be the DS equivalent of the GameBoy Color, so how exactly do you release a new handheld to a market who thought they already upgraded 6 months ago? This will piss a lot of people off, of that you can be sure. Personally I bought a DSi (blue mario bundle) for the larger screens, matte finnish and better system color but others thought they were getting ahead of the curve, and will likely find out its was fools gold they bought.

Then lets factor in Nintendo’s main market, children. Many parents over the holiday period bought their child a DSi as either an upgrade or new system. Those same children are either getting into Pokemon or are waiting for gold and silver to play on their new DSi. Now a mere six months from now Nintendo may be pushing a new handheld with a Pokemon playable only on it. Leaving the newly bought DSi as paper weight for poke fanatics. Again anger insues.

of course this is only to point out why others are mad, as I agree that its time the DS fade out. Though thats not to say Im buying a DS2 on day one, I have learned my lesson over the years ;)

ElTopo

The thing is though, is that consumers are coming into the market late. The DSi was the last push on the DS1 line of products. You could almost compare it to buying a car.

It would like if I had purchased a Nissan 350Z in November of 2009, then in January of 2010 found out that the 370Z was debuting at the same price I had payed for my now older and defunct model. Or it would be like a consumer going out and purchasing a PS2 slimline, the upgrade to the PS2 system, in January of 2005 then having some kind of consumer backlash when the Ps3 is announced with a ship date of November 2006.

While the DSi is a newer platform, and while the DS2 is beng announced, consumers need to be aware that the DSi has been out since April of last year, if a consumer is choosing to upgrade or get into the handheld market now, its a poor decision on their part. By the time the DS2 is announced the DSi platform will have been released for a year, and by the time we see a DS2 release, will have been almost 2 years old, and will continue to see support for possibly another year out. Three years plus the four years previous of console support is a massive amount of content and bang for your buck, all on a 160$ platform, with games coming at a discount even.

Smarter consuming is better consuming.

JeremyR

While I do think the hardware does really need an upgrade, at the same time, I don’t see why it makes sense for Nintendo.

The DS is still on top, both in Japan and NA. So, why compete with themselves?

2 years down the road or so, sure

Also to me, I think the DSi was really more an attempt to get their foot wet into the digital download market for portables, not really an incremental update.

I also don’t expect backward compatibility, to avoid problems with piracy.

ElTopo

The DSi was more of an attempt to get their feet wet with a full on multimedia device, something that did other, non-game related things, like music, photos. animation etc. The digital download market was just a piece of it. It was very much an experiment for their next platform if you ask me.

While piracy is a concern, I don’t see how or why it would affect their decision to make titles backwards compatible, titles they have already released and discontinued. I wouldn’t be surprised if they used the same media format for the new system, all they would have to do is upgrade the storage size of the card since most DS games are fairly small, anywhere from a few hundred megs to the largest around 2 gigs.

szoo

yay for ds2 !

thebanditking

Like I said before I think its time the DS get a serious overhaul to its processors and media size, the horrible compression and pixelation in my copy of Sands of Destruction is proof of that.

Though I will add that all this could have been solved if Nintendo actually knew how to make hardware in a efficient way. The Original DS was a complete disaster from a design standpoint, poorly lit screens, tiny stylus, ugly blocky design, and far too big. The DS Lite while an obvious improvement should have never been the upgrade but rather the initial model. The DSi should have come when the DS Lite was at its half way mark, to allow for market growth and to introduce the online and store elements, thus by now everyone would agree its time to upgrade. Can anyone honestly tell me there was any thing about the DS lite that could not have been done when the DS launched if a little more though had been put in? Most of the changes made were forehead slapping easy to fix. Bigger stylus, even fold clam shell design (GBA SPd it), brighter back lit screens (again GBA SP did it). I mean come on, its like every time they make a new handheld they completely forget all the design lessons learned from the previous one.

Its in this area that despite its failures I really applaud the PSP. Sony designed the original to be fully capable for the long run and PSP-1000 owners are only missing a few negligible features from the 2k and 3k models. Other wise you can do anything on a launch PSP that the new ones do now. Even the PSP-Go’s changes are nothing the PSP-1000 can not do, as a quick
firmware upgrade will get you access to the PS Store and the new Minis catalog and a visit to Amazon can net you a 16GB flash card to download to your hearts content. This way no one gets pissed off or feels forced to upgrade and the entire userbase can agree that a new system is needed, when one gets announced.

malek86

On that note, I always laugh when people say that the PSP “is not a portable console”. A quick googling for images shows that the differences in size between the original DS and the PSP-1000 are negligible at best, with the PSP being only a couple cms longer, and the DS being far bulkier anyway. If the PSP is not portable, then the first DS wasn’t either.

The PSP-2000 is somewhat longer than the Lite, so the point is more valid… but still, there isn’t a sea of differences between the two.

Aside from that, we probably didn’t need the Go, just like we didn’t need the DSi XL. So yeah.

ElTopo

Yeah the Go was garbage, it honestley looked like they grabbed some extra Milo units off the shelves and slapped a PSP processor in it and called it a day. The DSi XL at least was intended for that older audience, or the gamer that just likes big ass gadgets(although I myself am liking the design of the Dell Mini 5…).

I wonder if Nintendos economic situation had a role in the design for the original DS at the time. Perhaps Nintendo was not sure if it would be successful, if consumers were going to latch on to this idea of dual screens over the current line of more simplistic GB SP and micro platforms. Maybe thats why it was designed almost with a more economical approach, a more reserved look, before Nintendo invested for the long haul?

_edit_ The original design was uglier, it was just a grey kind of brick looking system (E3 2004) while the release version was the redesign featuring mostly cosmetic changes, which at the time seemed to be a popular design among gamers. I think looking back and having the DSi and DS lite to compare it to, as well as a plethora of other popular shiny gadgets, we are just nitpicking it more then it deserves. This is all pre-Apple design wave and there really wasnt anything like it on the market…

Guest

let me be the first to say that if it has tilt functions, kirby tilt and tumble 2 is possible. one can dream.

ElTopo

Yeah haha. I dont really care so much for tilt functions, I mean outside of a few niche titles I don’t see it really being that big of a deal…but hey think how much fun it would be if we had a port of something like Ikaruga or some Cave shooter, and all one had to do was tilt the system to switch from a horizontal field to a vertical field…

Kinda simple and not really necessary since it would take about 3 button presses.. but I guess if you can do it why not.

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